About
The Policing, Policy, and Philosophy Initiative (3PI) launched in 2023 with support from the American Philosophical Association and Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State. Its aim is to foster collaboration among philosophers and ethicists who study policing, with the goal of connecting their work to ongoing policy debates. Ecumenical in its approach, 3PI’s membership includes scholars with different methodological approaches to philosophy as well as perspectives on policing and how best to promote public safety.
3PI Coordinators
Raff Donelson
Raff is an associate professor of law at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. He is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research grapples with questions in law and philosophy. In philosophy, his research focuses on the foundations of ethics and questions about the nature of law. His legal work centers on constitutional protections for incarcerated persons and the accused. He is an editor at the Journal of Legal Philosophy. Previously, Raff held an appointment at Penn State Dickinson Law and a joint appointment with the Paul M. Hebert Law Center and the Department of Philosophy at Louisiana State University. He earned a PhD in philosophy as well as a JD from Northwestern University.
Ben Jones
Ben is an assistant professor of public policy and research associate in the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State. He is author of Apocalypse without God (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and co-editor with Eduardo Mendieta of The Ethics of Policing (New York University Press, 2021). He currently is working on a book project on the ethics of police deadly force. His research appears in the Journal of Politics, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, and other venues, including popular outlets like the Washington Post.
Désirée Lim
Désirée is the Catherine Shultz Rein Early Career Professor and an assistant professor of philosophy at Penn State. She also is a research associate in the Rock Ethics Institute and a member of the PPE Society’s Ethics and Public Policy Working Group. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s McCoy Center for Ethics in Society and completed her PhD in philosophy at King’s College London. Her primary research interests lie in contemporary political philosophy, with a special focus on questions about migration, citizenship, and global justice. Her first monograph, Immigration and Social Equality: The Ethics of Skill-Selective Immigration Policies, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
Eduardo Mendieta
Eduardo is a professor of philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. He has a PhD in philosophy from the New School for Social Research and MA in systematic theology from Union Theological Seminary. His research interests include Frankfurt School critical theory, Latin American philosophy, liberation philosophy, and Latino/a philosophy. He also has done work on and with Angela Y. Davis. His books include The Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy: Karl-Otto Apel’s Semiotics and Discourse Ethics and Global Fragments: Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and Critical Theory.